{"id":"01KG8AKJ8ARXPVRZASVB7RD6CB","cid":"bafkreiacjot5e2hjqlywr6xznslpi5gdh4if3pqd2m5hneyckmgzscibcq","type":"section","properties":{"description":"# German Emigrant Ships\n## Overview\nThis is a section titled \"German Emigrant Ships\" extracted from the text file [redburn.txt](arke:01KG89J1GP71YDJ60P8SRH97MF). It appears within [Chapter XXXIII](arke:01KG8AJRKNFPGM1AKGB393MHFG) of an unknown novel. The section discusses the narrator's observations of German emigrants boarding ships bound for New York. It is part of the [Melville Complete Works](arke:01KG89HMDZKNY753EZE1CJ8HZW) collection.\n\n## Context\nThe section is part of a larger chapter that also includes a section titled [The Salt-Droghers](arke:01KG8AKJ86MMH6FKESBK9CQMY3), which precedes this section. The text was extracted from the file [redburn.txt](arke:01KG89J1GP71YDJ60P8SRH97MF) by a structure-extraction-lambda function.\n\n## Contents\nThe section describes the narrator's observations of German emigrants preparing to depart for New York. It depicts the emigrants as families with members of all ages, gathering on the forecastle to sing and pray every evening. The narrator praises the German emigrants as orderly and valuable additions to the American population, highlighting their contributions to the Northwestern States by transferring their agricultural practices from Europe to the American Midwest. The text also reflects on America's identity as a nation settled by people of all nations, advocating for the extinction of national prejudices and envisioning a future of unity and restoration.\n","description_generated_at":"2026-01-30T20:49:17.504Z","description_model":"gemini-2.5-flash-lite","description_title":"German Emigrant Ships","end_line":6671,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:08.273Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"German Emigrant Ships","source_file":"01KG89J1GP71YDJ60P8SRH97MF","start_line":6604,"text":"departed. There was hardly any thing I witnessed in the docks that\r\ninterested me more than the German emigrants who come on board the\r\nlarge New York ships several days before their sailing, to make every\r\nthing comfortable ere starting. Old men, tottering with age, and little\r\ninfants in arms; laughing girls in bright-buttoned bodices, and astute,\r\nmiddle-aged men with pictured pipes in their mouths, would be seen\r\nmingling together in crowds of five, six, and seven or eight hundred in\r\none ship.\r\n\r\nEvery evening these countrymen of Luther and Melancthon gathered on the\r\nforecastle to sing and pray. And it was exalting to listen to their\r\nfine ringing anthems, reverberating among the crowded shipping, and\r\nrebounding from the lofty walls of the docks. Shut your eyes, and you\r\nwould think you were in a cathedral.\r\n\r\nThey keep up this custom at sea; and every night, in the dog-watch,\r\nsing the songs of Zion to the roll of the great ocean-organ: a pious\r\ncustom of a devout race, who thus send over their hallelujahs before\r\nthem, as they hie to the land of the stranger.\r\n\r\nAnd among these sober Germans, my country counts the most orderly and\r\nvaluable of her foreign population. It is they who have swelled the\r\ncensus of her Northwestern States; and transferring their ploughs from\r\nthe hills of Transylvania to the prairies of Wisconsin; and sowing the\r\nwheat of the Rhine on the banks of the Ohio, raise the grain, that, a\r\nhundred fold increased, may return to their kinsmen in Europe.\r\n\r\nThere is something in the contemplation of the mode in which America\r\nhas been settled, that, in a noble breast, should forever extinguish\r\nthe prejudices of national dislikes. Settled by the people of all\r\nnations, all nations may claim her for their own. You can not spill a\r\ndrop of American blood without spilling the blood of the whole world.\r\nBe he Englishman, Frenchman, German, Dane, or Scot; the European who\r\nscoffs at an American, calls his own brother _Raca,_ and stands in\r\ndanger of the judgment. We are not a narrow tribe of men, with a\r\nbigoted Hebrew nationality—whose blood has been debased in the attempt\r\nto ennoble it, by maintaining an exclusive succession among ourselves.\r\nNo: our blood is as the flood of the Amazon, made up of a thousand\r\nnoble currents all pouring into one. We are not a nation, so much as a\r\nworld; for unless we may claim all the world for our sire, like\r\nMelchisedec, we are without father or mother.\r\n\r\nFor who was our father and our mother? Or can we point to any Romulus\r\nand Remus for our founders? Our ancestry is lost in the universal\r\npaternity; and Caesar and Alfred, St. Paul and Luther, and Homer and\r\nShakespeare are as much ours as Washington, who is as much the world’s\r\nas our own. We are the heirs of all time, and with all nations we\r\ndivide our inheritance. On this Western Hemisphere all tribes and\r\npeople are forming into one federated whole; and there is a future\r\nwhich shall see the estranged children of Adam restored as to the old\r\nhearthstone in Eden.\r\n\r\nThe other world beyond this, which was longed for by the devout before\r\nColumbus’ time, was found in the New; and the deep-sea-lead, that first\r\nstruck these soundings, brought up the soil of Earth’s Paradise. Not a\r\nParadise then, or now; but to be made so, at God’s good pleasure, and\r\nin the fullness and mellowness of time. The seed is sown, and the\r\nharvest must come; and our children’s children, on the world’s jubilee\r\nmorning, shall all go with their sickles to the reaping. Then shall the\r\ncurse of Babel be revoked, a new Pentecost come, and the language they\r\nshall speak shall be the language of Britain. Frenchmen, and Danes, and\r\nScots; and the dwellers on the shores of the Mediterranean, and in the\r\nregions round about; Italians, and Indians, and Moors; there shall\r\nappear unto them cloven tongues as of fire.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r","title":"German Emigrant Ships"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG8AJRKNFPGM1AKGB393MHFG","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG89J1GP71YDJ60P8SRH97MF","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG89HMDZKNY753EZE1CJ8HZW","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG8AKJ86MMH6FKESBK9CQMY3","peer_type":"section","predicate":"prev"}],"ver":3,"created_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:08.458Z","ts":"2026-01-30T20:49:18.553Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF5C36SQEVDHC9CBNZZJH9K"}}